Thursday, December 8, 2011

On All Things Magic: Marco Tempest

If you didn't see Marco Tempest at LeWeb11 yesterday, I am just so sorry for you! He threw a few magical thoughts up on the massive screen behind him, like Goethe's excellent suggestion:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

He showed us how the brain wants to believe in the visual, filling in the blanks at times when it decides it knows what's going on, but it can be fooled. I really can't do his performance justice here, so I'll ask you to find a way to see him live. He's so very good.Check out his Ted Talk here.

Watch some of these great videos and you'll get an idea how he plays gently enough with your brain, then politely returns it where it was sitting lazily protected by your thick cranium, much improved and sparkling with new ideas.

That's the UMBRELLA trick.

That's the PENCIL trick.

Had enough? Pretty great eh? Better check this link. He is doing a lot more wild stuff than this, but isn't it nice the way he turns our heads around to BELIEVE in the idea that you can do magic tricks with video and online and still TRUST him -- that it's not just some editing trick. Wish the models they showed in adverts could be trusted not to be photoshopped up.